Rachel Austen is a chartered occupational psychologist and business consultant, specialising in stress management, people assessment, leadership development and coaching.
She has lived in the UK, Singapore and Hong Kong and has over 15 years of consulting and coaching experience, having worked for two leading global consultancies in the field; SHL and Mercer. During this time, she has successful led projects for some the largest FTSE 250 and Fortune 500 Global organisations working across Europe and Asia Pacific. Her experience spans a wide range of industry sectors including the private and public sector. Some examples of clients include Citibank, Standard Chartered, HSBC, Morgan Stanley, Prudential, Deloitte, KPMG, AIA, DLA Piper, Kuehne Nagel, Li & Fung, BBC Studios, M&S, John Lewis, Lidl, International Hotels Group, Moët Hennessy, Ermenegildo Zegna, Grosvenor, Vodafone, the UK Prison Service and the NHS.
She set up Austen Advisory in May 2015 as an advisory practice to help serving individuals, small and large organisations alike. The guiding principle is to undertake successful projects and achieve desired outcomes. Rachel is keen to be vendor agnostic and develop fit for purpose solutions, drawing on the best tools and partners to meet her clients’ needs.
She is an assessment and leadership development specialist who is passionate about helping individuals and organisations fulfil their potential. She brings together her diverse experience and her deep technical expertise in the field of occupational psychology to provide valuable insights for increased effectiveness and performance in the workplace.
Past consulting projects include leadership assessments at all levels up to C-Suite, executive coaching, developing competency models and talent management frameworks, assessment/development centres, leadership development programs, executive coaching, burnout management and resilience building programmes, situational judgement tests and other psychometric test design.
Her current focus is in the area of work-related stress, having created a ground-breaking psychometric tool called AURA providing a scientific yet practical approach to measuring and managing stress. She believes gaining proper insight into stress is the first step in mitigating risk from burnout and increasing resilience.
Rachel has an academic background in work-related stress having studied under Dr Tom Cox at the Institute of Work, Health & Organisations which specialises in stress. She gained a certification in risk assessments for work-related stress in 2004.
Rachel was motivated to develop AURA when she burnt out which crept up on her without noticing the warning signs. Using her expertise in psychometric assessment design, she saw the important need to have a proper, rigorous assessment of the impact of stress and what was driving this in the workplace to enable individuals and organisations to take early, targeted action.
She has delivered burnout management and resilience programmes for several multinational organisations in Asia Pacific and Europe using the AURA approach and a full toolkit of workshops, practical tools and development initiatives to support implementation. Clients include BBC Studios, Booking.com, G4S, Mediabrands, HSBC, MUFG, DLA Piper, Phillip Morris International, Zipline and others. Rachel continues to expand the AURA network of distributors to support delivery of AURA programmes across the globe.
Outside work, she is a keen runner having completed several ultra marathons . She also loves to travel, always looking for new experiences.
Rachel Austen’s Research & Articles
Rachel Austen’s work has been featured in various academic publications as follows:
- A. Howard, M Choi, R. Austen, N Krig, S. Raymond. (2011) Similarities and differences in Managerial Judgement around the world: developing an international SJT Paper presented at Division of Occupational Psychology Conference
- R. Austen, A. Fradera, J. Bywater.(2009) Selection tools in an international context – screening for Customer Advisors across 4 European Countries Poster presentation at Division of Occupational Psychology Conference
- H. E. Bennett, S. A. Thomas, R. Austen, A. M. S. Morris, N. B. Lincoln (2006). Validation of screening measures for assessing mood in stroke patients. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, Volume 45 Issue 3
Rachel has also completed multiple research studies commissioned by clients which are not publicly available.
Recent articles that Rachel has written or been featured in include: